We spend a lot of time writing about our individual levels and areas of expertise, but this time, I wanted Carter Harkins to express himself through a series of questions and answers. He has a pretty varied background, and it was a lot of fun to pick his brain. Here is part 1 of my interview with him.

Jonathan Sanders: How did you get started providing Audio/Video services for the web?

Carter Harkins: I am a musician from way back, and I play keyboard/synthesizer, so I have always been pretty connected to the technical side of the arts. When the world wide web came along in the 90’s, I immediately got interested in how computers could be used to musically collaborate across distances. These days, it’s no big deal for a bass player to lay down his part in Chicago one day, and put it on the web for the saxophone player in London to add his part. But back then it was The Holy Grail.

Video came later as I started experimenting with digital imagery as part of marketing musicians I worked with.  And at some point, I realized that I had the skills to be able to handle the audiovisual web for clients, so I just hung out my shingle and opened for business. It’s been a lot of fun, from the early days until now, growing into a full-service marketing firm people are taking seriously.

JS: Are there any common misconceptions about how audio/video works online?

CH: There are a LOT of small technical things that, if not understood properly, can add up to something that sounds or looks awful.  I’ve done a lot of podcasting for clients, and the number one misconception is that the audiences are all listening on iPods. They aren’t. They listen in front of their computers on those dinky little monitor-mounted speakers. So engineering the sound for that environment means that my recordings always sound better to people.

In video there are still way too many codecs and formats for the web, and people tend to only publish their video for the platform they own (PC or MAC), ignoring the other platform entirely. If the video is going to be seen on the web, I go with Flash video, because it is completely cross-platform, and the only format that in natively installed on about 98% of all computers worldwide.  Mobile content is another story these days, so lately we are encoding videos in multiple formats, aimed at and optimized for the devices that are popular today.

But perhaps the biggest misconception about a/v content on the web is that you can do whatever you want to with it. Copyright laws have NOT kept up with the internet explosion, and technology makes it super-easy to rip music and download videos, but just because you can do those things so easily doesn’t mean that it’s legal.

JS: There are a lot of web video standards now, with H.264 being a particularly strong competitor to Flash. Nonetheless, Flash is still the most used format for video on the web. Where do you see Adobe taking it?

CH: Flash now utilizes the “H-dot” standard natively, so there’s no real competition there any longer.  What has always made the Flash environment more interesting to me than other ways of doing video is how it can use video in a rich, data-driven way to deliver user experiences that are built around visual content.  In these applications, video is just the content that fuels other interactions.  HTML5 is starting to touch on these tools now as well, but Flash has been doing it for years.

We have begun to see the full version of Flash supported on phones, tablets and handheld devices this year. That opens up an entirely new playground of fun to be had. Even with Apple and the Flashless iPad and iPhone exploding in popularity, and HTML5 standards making many of the features of Flash less attractive in the browser, Adobe doesn’t seem to be resting on the fact that it has always had market dominance. Things change fast in the online space, so Adobe is still pushing the envelope. It’s still a strong contender for multimedia applications.

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Stay tuned for more of this interview.

I put together the music clip for this, and also decided to present the video with a little more flair than a typical demo reel, so it coul serve a bigger purpose, namely that of a marketing video, which, due to so much recent work, I have put off repeatedly. No complaints. I hope we all get too busy to tend to our own gardens now and then. Enjoy!

So just what can I do with the most amazing audio tools money can buy, and all the talents and skills money could never buy? You’re going to think I’m lying, but I’m going to tell you anyway, because it’s just so cool.

Have you ever looked at a photograph or a graphic image, and wondered what it sounds like? Ever thought about sticking the latest collection of Christmas photos into your CD player, and listening to them? See, I told you you’d think I was crazy or something.

But that’s just what I’ve been doing. It’s the most innovative idea I’ve seen come along in quite some time. The visual world has been creeping into audio tools for a long time, with some amazing spectral analysis, phase alignment and waveform editing tools, and there have even been some impressive visual interfaces for effects processors. But to use Photoshop to tweak an image, then import it right across to Audition and listen to it, well, it’s all that and a bag of fries.

Granted, it took a little playing around to understand just what is happening, and a little more time to put together some playable, useful (musical, even) images, but at last I feel like I’m on to a new way of sound-smithing that promises to finally be intuitive.

This isn’t a how-to post. I just wanted to show off, so, without further comment and for your listening pleasure, I give you a nice little pad, and the image that created it. Feel free to download the CD-quality .WAV file and use it, if you have a use for it. Just shoot me an email, and let me know how it was used.

I loaded up both files in my favorite professional audio editing suite, and examined the waveforms. Before I ever pressed play, I knew which recording I would be using (see illustration below, followed by an explanation).

The top waveform (A) was made using Audacity, and the levels were too high for my client’s microphone and voice, resulting in the distortion of the audio signal. Waveform B was automatically recorded by the web conferencing site, and while the audio is much more consistent across the entire recording, the levels were too low.

So which one did I know I wanted to use?

Recording B, unequivocally. The levels were low, but raising the overall volume is much easier and results in a much more coherent audio track than trying to take a distorted loud track and remove the distortion. Once distortion is introduced into the recording, it is very hard to remove it without creating other nasty side effects. Signal level distortion can happen either because the microphone input levels were set too high or the equipment being used to interface with the phone system was mismatched or unable to handle the dynamic ranges of both ends of the conversation (there is usually a disparity between the level of your voice and the voice of the other party when recording).

So what steps can be taken to find the ideal middle ground, the perfect recording that isn’t so loud it causes distortion, but not so soft that the volume has to be artificially raised or “normalized” (a process that usually also raises the volume of other extraneous noises unnoticed before in the recording)?

1. Do several sample recordings, and closely watch the recording level indicators. If they jump into the red area of the scale, lower the recording level in the software you use.
2. It is just as important to listen to the recording, too. Just because your level indicators aren’t peaking into the red area, the phone bridge device you are using might be distorting the signal before it ever leaves the unit on iots way to the recording software. If the device is adding distortion (either when you speak or the other party speaks or both) you will need to see if the device has a way to adjust the signal strength. Some do ($$$$), but most don’t ($).
3. Another option, and one I would strongly encourage you to explore, is to get off the phone company’s lines and use your high-speed internet connection to make the voice call. This is not an expensive option when you use Skype to place the call, and a simple recording tool such as PowerGramo to record the call. I will cover these two tools in more depth in a later post (let me know in the comments if you would find such info helpful).

Obviously, there is quite a bit more technical information that could be offered here, but I like to keep things simple on the blog. If you have any questions, please let me know!